


House of Cards

by quiescent9



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 05:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12741537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiescent9/pseuds/quiescent9
Summary: Following the events ofthis video(in which Kanako Murakami confesses a long-time crush on Artur Gachinski, who happens to be listening), Artur gets invited to Nagoya. There, he meets Shoma Uno. Disappointment and ambition collide.





	House of Cards

_There's a painting by Caravaggio, done late in his life._ David with the Head of Goliath. _In it, the young warrior holds at the end of his outstretched hand the head of Goliath, ravaged and old. But that is not the true sadness in the picture. It is assumed that the face of David is a portrait of the youthful Caravaggio and the head of Goliath is a portrait of him as an older man, how he looked when he did the painting. Youth judging age at the end of its outstretched hand._ \-- _The English Patient_ by Michael Ondaatje

 

Kana-chan has a crush.

The Japanese media loves Kana-chan. They tease her mercilessly only because she lets them, with those twinkling eyes of hers that vanish into lines when she beams. Her embarrassed protests always encourage deeper enquiry because they inevitably escalate into gushing exclamations that surprise even herself. Shoma, pushing away from the boards and stroking left, right, and left again before easing into a glide, closes his eyes and feels the heat rise up to his cheeks in answer to the chill. He smiles to himself. Behind him the cameraman's equipment make satisfying mechanical noises, masticating rumours, gossip, parallel lives. He imagines Kana-chan bringing a hand to her mouth to suppress a laugh. More so than he, Kana-chan is made for the media, for meeting prying questions and camera flashes with a ready gaze, a firefly drawn to a flame.

Despite the obvious juvenility, nobody grudges her the attention. It's not hard to see why, though. Her sincerity is captivating. She has the loveliest presence, the most infectious smile that brightens up the entire room, shining right into the furthest corners. Shoma is glad for Kana-chan, on the darker days, though there are corners he wishes were better shielded from her light. Anyway, they both tacitly recognise that it's just another performance, one of many she will give post-retirement, what with the Olympic-year hype and all that.

Retired or not, they are all offerings made to the ice, although Shoma believes the ice has something to offer him too. He believes he can be chiselled into something better. Shoma lifts his arms and swivels 720 degrees before lowering them gently. Not gently enough, maybe. He tries again.

Kana-chan giggles. It would be cute if Shoma hadn't known her since they were children. He circles the rink twice, catches something about Instagram messages, the practicality of a long-distance relationship, the legendary Plushenko and ... babies? Shoma blushes. Better to stick to known territory. He takes a breath, conjures up the opening strains of Vivaldi's _Winter_ and readies for the first jump, tarrying just half a second too long before picking the ice. Twisting his body in mid-air, he braces himself for the fall. Just one of many.

Many times he catches the word "Gachinski," like it's a mantra or a talisman.

****

Or a broken relic. The flight has taken a toll on Artur's back. The stewardess catches the grimace on his face and offers token concern that he waves away. Nothing like chronic pain to remind you that you're still alive. He has no idea why he has agreed to this. Kanako is cute enough, and the entire affair is sponsored by some rabid fans of Kansai television and hence at no cost to himself, but it takes him away from the rink and his charges, a desertion which dogs him as irresponsible. Yet, truth be told, he is somewhat weary of fattening lambs for slaughter and could use some diversion. So here he is, cramped into the back of a claustrophobic taxi with camera and crew and unasked questions, three days' luggage in the boot and streaks of white-hot pain shooting up his spine, heading towards a skating rink in Nagoya.

Finally, he meets Kanako in the flesh. They shake hands, hug lightly, their fingers grip each others' elbows before letting go. They stammer through the standard greetings in English before conversation stalls and they stare at each other expectantly before breaking into nervous, awkward laughter. Artur gets a distinct feeling of not having done his homework, self-recriminations he hasn't experienced for quite some time now, and wishes he had memorised a couple of sentences during those wakeful hours onboard the plane. Kanako blushes. He runs a perfunctory hand through his hair, ducks his head and sees that she has already laced up her skates. She slips off her skate guards and steps onto the ice.

A melody on piano, suitably pensive, suitably melancholic. Kanako weaves together accomplishment and regret, pasts and prospects. Despite knowing that all choreography is tied to specific cadences of the music and deliberately engineered to elicit a particular emotional response, Artur still finds himself mired in Kanako's performance, her delicate hands now heralding the strings. Artur feels like someone has wrapped his fingers around his heart and made a fist. His breathing has somehow quickened and he tries unsuccessfully to even it out without the people around him noticing. The lights seem suddenly harsher, the back of his neck stings with heat. The twirling figure on the ice confronts him with an immensity of loss that answers to his own, yet it is a loss that issues from one who keeps on giving. Kanako gives, and gives, yet the smile on her face is none the worse for wear. When she commands the rising crescendo with a beautiful spiral, Artur can almost see the expansive future ahead of her, and tears come to his eyes unbidden.

"Shoma!"

Kanako runs to the opposite end of the rink and reaches across the rails to a boy with tousled hair and takes both of his hands in hers. She turns to Artur and waves. The boy follows suit. And that is when Artur, with ragged breathing and eyes still misted over, sees nineteen-year-old Shoma Uno, 2017 Worlds Silver Medallist, for the first time.

****

Shoma shakes hands with the Russian skater, takes in his sculpted silhouette and nods. It would be rude to ask Kana-chan in Japanese how long Artur will be staying in Nagoya. The three of them stand in a loose triangle, hands haplessly on hips, before the interviewer breaks the drawn-out silence with some expository of Artur's previous accomplishments. Artur, visibly uncomfortable, clears his throat and shifts his weight from foot to foot. Names and dates bleed into each other, predecessors with their legacies and Artur's own inheritance of promise that fell short of fulfilment are summed up in a gentle series of syllables that remain, fortunately for him, incomprehensible. Shoma senses his discomfort and looks away politely. Kanako seizes the lull in the conversation and guides them away from skating and coaching and PyeongChang and begins talking about a new game show that she's been taking part in for the past two weeks.

Half-listening to Kana-chan's chatter, Shoma navigates the gaps in time made even more glaring by the interviewer's well-meaning omissions. He recalls the 2012 Worlds podium with both Yuzu-kun and Takahashi-senshu and Japan's domination of the figure skating arena from then till now. Their proud success achieved by the accumulation of individual and team efforts had displaced the dreams of many others. He had never seen it this way before; the past was irrevocable, yes, but he'd always assumed the future was never set in stone. Its very malleability was what made his challenge of Yuzu-kun's position on the podium possible. Yet, he cannot tear himself away from the idea that certain failures of the past were destined predicates for his current success. If this was true, then the future necessitated certain events in the present, right now, _now_ as he breathes and worries about that impossible landing on the lutz and Kanako imitates the speech patterns of a popular artiste and Artur folds his arms tighter around his chest as though it could make him disappear, the brokenness of _now_ could very well be an ordained premise for events yet to come, which in turn were fixed destinations for futures further down the line.

But Shoma believes that what he is feeling or doing now cannot be anything but choice. He hides one hand behind his back, closes it into a fist. See, that was explicitly _chosen_ , consciously done. He believes that every wrong in the present is, like the entry to a jump, the occasion for something breathtaking, something potentially magnificent. Shoma is young, he will do what he can to assert his will. He fills in those elided failures earlier with Artur's grey-green eyes, shadowed yet quick to dance in laughter, as he does now, mirth almost spilling over the crinkled edges of his face at one of Kanako's exaggerated facial expressions. Shoma can't help but laugh along. Artur looks at him and he shudders, embarrassed but still laughing, covering his face with his hands, and suddenly the years become lighter, as though someone has shaken them upside down and emptied them of their ridden despair.

****

Artur hasn't skated publicly for a while; that domestic competition in March really didn't count for anything. But he supposes he wasn't brought here for his skills as a conversationalist. To be honest, there is still a part of him that craves the attention, to have all eyes trained on his lone figure in the centre of the rink, back be damned.

There must be some reason skaters are drawn to _El Tango de Roxanne_. Dai-chan has done an exhibition to it, Kana-chan has a short program, and god knows who else is simulating passion to those plaintive shrieks of the violin blasted over the audio system. Shoma secretly swears never to come within an inch of this soundtrack. He hates the sensual husky yells of the baritone; for some strange reason they frighten him. He will, however, remember them differently hereafter.

Artur stills, arms braced. The queen has this program under her belt. Zhenya has skated to it before with live accompaniment. No doubt some Canadian ice-dance pair will use it in the future for their free skate, Artur is sure. Does wonders for their chemistry. With pairs it is undoubtedly more straightforward; it is only in singles that the distinctions between the characters become indistinguishable. Typically, a girl who skates to _Roxanne_ plays the prostitute, the streetwalker torn between romance and reality. A man who skates this program has a few more options: he is the pimp who hawks the woman, he is the pining young lover whose love is worthless, he is the client who buys her sexual favours. All three roles are collapsed into a single body. We are all whores, Artur believes, we just sell different parts of ourselves, knees, ankles, shoulders, backs, and what is left is but the skeletal remains of our dreams.

Still, he skates. Artur wakes up at the crack of dawn, throws an assortment of training necessities into his bag by feel in the dark and reaches the rink before any of his students does. He teaches them about edges and surfaces, take-offs and landings, centres and the far-flung regions of ambition. He extorts them to respect the ice, to caress its hard surface, to be sharp and light as air. Often, he finds himself mouthing platitudes he had once rolled his eyes at, not too many years ago, only this time he is almost sincere and his students are the ones facing him with jaded expressions.

Still, he skates. His arms strike a pose on the off-beat. Desire is always belated, fulfilment even more so. Dai-chan works by seduction, he flies with such speed and ferocity that the audience is moved by sheer force alone. Plushenko has faultless carriage and an almost inhuman sense of self-possession. But Artur is different. Even when he attains credible height on the first jump he skates weighted, tortured. One never knows if those hands running along his body are the instruments of devotion or confinement. Perhaps what he suggests is that the two are not so different after all. Mid-way Shoma can see him tiring and silently wills him to continue. Artur misses the entry for the penultimate combination spin, and when he finally gets into position the spin is laboured and lacks speed and finesse. He skates with a heavy heart, Shoma realises, mesmerized and ashamed. He feels complicit, ( _what have we done?_ , he asks himself) even though he has done nothing except to be the first man to have landed the quad flip in competition. The years have filled out Artur's once-willowy profile but he still has the same beautiful extensions, the same lines that stretch from foot to fingertip that Shoma now re-traces over his aged body. Shoma, of course, has never seen Artur skate before. He doesn't know if he is seeing the craft of a man or the shadow of giants, the same way people watch him and look for Dai-chan, which makes him feel proud yet sorely lacking.

Artur finishes, rubs a hand over his face and barks a laugh as he glides over to the boards. He's a little breathless.

"Good skate," Shoma says.

 _Good_ , Artur scoffs. _You mean, good for a person in my physical condition? Or good for non-competitive skating? Or just good that I didn't fall and land on my ass?_

Shoma's head snaps up, as though he had just overheard everything. He forces himself to look into Artur's eyes and says again, meaningfully, "Is good."

Artur shrugs and says nothing.

****

Yuzuru Hanyu turned senior almost at the same time. Artur remembers his mischievous manner, his boyish face that took on such a look of intense concentration when he skated after perfection. They were both so hungry to make a name for themselves back then, and yet boys being boys, they still clung on to the comforting remnants of idol worship. In between shared practice sessions they gushed over Zhenya, his impeccable form on jumps, his grace, his beauty, two boys unabashedly going on and on until finally Artur had the last word because he got to share a rink with the King, and because, childishly enough, he had blond locks that hung down to his chin. It was all in good fun, stammering back and forth in skating English with nothing of the fluidity they exhibited on the ice, a surfeit of words that left their true longings unsaid, _I also want to be King, one day_.

Artur can see the same tussle between admiration and ambition playing out on Shoma's face when the latter gets asked about Daisuke Takahashi, even though Shoma is obviously reluctant to voice his opinion on his favourite skater. It is as if he implicitly recognises the insufficiency of words in providing a credible account of artistry and expression. He knows that esteem and self-advancement are at undeniable odds and hence wishes to leave the contradiction unspoken. He knows that by mere association with one's forbears one draws inevitable, parasitic comparisons. Also, he is, perhaps, more mature in confronting his own future, which will rest on the upheaval of current rankings and the interruption of Hanyu's domination of the podium. Shoma knows all this, because he has come to terms with his own hunger, not the ravenous sort, but a steady appetite that he will not see denied. He allows himself one concession, though, a shaggy fringe that serves as tribute to Dai-chan. But everything else, his gentleness, his massive presence, things which do not usually cohere in a single self that he barters over and over again on the ice, he calls his own.

In form and style Shoma could not be more different from Hanyu, who rotates faster and is blessed with greater flexibility and a slim frame, not too different from the King himself. (Artur too, once boasted such a form. _Just like Plushenko!_ , the interviewers would exclaim, as though that was the highest possible praise. And it was, once, for Artur too, until it became the most unbearable burden.) Shoma, on the other hand, is of stockier built and powers through his jumps like a drill sergeant, brutal and unforgiving. In the middle of dinner, Kanako would pinch his cheek and jab him in the side, hinting at some chubbiness that he would have to work away by the end of the month, and Shoma would swat at her hands and stick his tongue out at her, and Artur would shake his head at these children not much younger than himself.

Artur sips his green tea. Twenty by next month and not even 5 feet 3 inches! He can't help being envious. Having had his body betray him over and over, Artur secretly wishes Shoma will experience the same pain of taking six months to master a quad and having that suddenly overwritten by a treacherous three inches of growth over a single summer. Artur, of course, has never tasted Shoma's patience, the latter having taken five years to land the triple axel. If he had, he might want to adjust the duration of such trying times accordingly. And he would have done so, if Shoma hadn't turned to him right there and then with a winsome grin that completely unwound such cruel thoughts.

****

Diffident and unassuming off-ice, Shoma cuts an imposing figure when he performs. It is as though manhood visits him only when he is on the ice; only there can he access its graces and burdens, only when he is balanced precariously on metal blades can he declare his true intentions. But the bumbling, cherubic, sweater-clad adolescent all too capable of tripping over his own feet _is_ Shoma, as is the man who now reaches behind Artur to peel off his shirt and nudges him to raise his arms, which he does. He brings them down on Shoma's shoulders and grips them tight, his fingers probing scapula, clavicle and humerus for answers but finding none. Shoma continues to stare at him unflinchingly and he has to look away. He has nothing to offer such an open countenance; he can only append a luminous future with ill portents and he only knows how to parry pain with pain. Shoma nods, leans in to kiss him at the corner of his lips and Artur stares at the wall behind him and lets himself be kissed. He places a tentative hand on Artur's chest but Artur pushes it aside from this wanting cavity that is beyond the appeal of gentleness. What he really wants is to dismantle their bodies, to dislodge bone from socket and reconfigure his wasted frame to accommodate everything that he has lost.

Shoma nods, yes, yes. Talent is its own expectation and its own premise for disappointment. He knows that well enough. But he cannot possibly understand. Artur is taken over by an urge to punish him for this pretence. He smashes their mouths together and Shoma cries out, a muffled sound of pleasure, of protest. Artur is not one for sweet nothings. He rakes his fingers down Shoma's back, running along the hardened planes of muscle, the pristine cleft of his spine, finally coming to rest at that little give of waist that a boy not yet twenty can afford. He closes his eyes. Shoma covers his shaking hands with his own. 

Artur is not yet twenty-four. What a difference four years make, he muses, as if it were Time's fault all along.

Shoma does understand. It's nobody's fault that he hasn't been tested so sorely yet. Still, he is no stranger to the scourging litany of 'I could have been so much more'. He hooks his chin onto Artur's shoulder and clings to him as he tells him in a sigh that contains the countless sessions of solitary practice in the rink past midnight and his constant fear that he can never do Higuchi-sensei's and Yamada-sensei's efforts any justice. He disengages himself from Artur's arms and encircles him from behind instead, hollowing out his back and shoulders with each press of lips against skin. Artur remembers that terrifying morning when he couldn't get up from bed and begins to cry, this is so embarrassing, crying half-naked in front of someone he barely knows, but Shoma smiles and touches his face as if it is nothing at all, it is only respite from pain.

Artur lies back. He doesn't know how to gather together this scattered assortment of muscle and sinew into a recognisable self. Brick, mortar, shattered windowpanes. The king of spades is a sorry excuse for a man. Shoma murmurs, mouth to eyebrow, let me show you how. Here, he whispers, here, and here. Here when the house comes down, we can always build it up again.

****

Without a hint of arrogance, Shoma imagines himself on the Worlds podium with Yuzu-kun in second place. When that happens, he will push their foreheads together and Yuzu-kun will cry, all the while protesting the very fact of his tears, but Shoma will not say, _even though I won this time, you are always the champion in my heart_ , because he is no longer sure of the placement of this obscure organ of which he is the presumed owner. Instead, he will draw his fingers down Yuzu-kun's face and cradle that perfect chin between index and thumb, and later in the locker-room Shoma will demonstrate to him, now that they are equals, what it is like to love a man.

But that in all likelihood will not happen. For now, Shoma dances. Even if the whole world was watching he'd still dance his life out on the ice. Over and over he draws out the words he never got to say the first time around, back at the airport when Artur leaned in to whisper something into his ear and expected an answer but received none because Shoma heard it as a secret in Russian he did not understand.

**Author's Note:**

> Kanako Murakami's [exhibition skate to _Prayer for Taylor_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVvIyStEI04&t=192s), Artur Gachinski's [short program to _El Tango de Roxanne_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-DJ9xDK8sA) and Shoma Uno's [exhibition skate to _This Town_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al4XoK7uoE4)


End file.
